Thursday, July 27, 2006

AROUND THE WEB ON 7-27-06

This morning, I find myself racing the clock to post as much accumulated good stuff as I can. Thirty open browser tabs. Forty-five minutes. No particular order but for the first and last items.

Video of the Week

In a comment to a post on Richard Feynman earlier this week, the Resident Egoist recommends a superb video: "Hey, Feynman fans, if you haven't already, you should really make the time to watch this video."

He is absolutely correct! If you make the time, you will be glad you did.

The Mohammed Birch Society

Yeah. Posting about the war has been thin here over the past couple of days, but I got sick and tired of it and gave myself a break. Not only for our physical safety should we wage this war in whatever way we must to end it quickly, but we should do so for sanity's sake. The constant assault against our lives and values, insofar as we permit it by pulling punches, is a form of dhimmitude. I hate these flea-bitten, death-worshipping savages, their constant fighting, and their constant pleas for my attention.

Having said that, there is a war on, and I'm back....

Daniel Pipesdiscusses the consolation of having conspiracy theory nuts as political opponents.

CAIR believes that U.S. policy is made in the dark, at the behest of a lobby, and thereby ignores the lopsided views of the American electorate, 57 percent of whom sympathizes with Israel and only 4 percent with Hizbullah (according to a July 19 poll conducted by CNN). So long as CAIR continues to bark up the wrong tree, it has little chance of effecting real change. [link dropped]

True, but it is not simply a matter of "barking up the wrong tree". The mere unpopularity of an opinion does not make its supporters powerless to effect change. CAIR's problem here is not that they're ignoring opinion polls, but that they are ignoring reality. That is the cardinal folly in America, and that is why Americans remain firmly on Israel's side. We know who started this.

What makes Annan's allegation so unforgiveable is that his UN Interim Force in Lebanon has been warning for days about what almost certainly caused this tragedy. Hezbollah fighters, who have already been firing behind screens of women and children, have also been shooting from behind and next to the UN positions, presumably hoping Israel will not dare shoot back and risk exactly this kind of propaganda disaster. [bold added]

With Kofi Annan asking whether Israel deliberately targeted the post, it is only fair that we ask whether he deliberately left men in the line of fire in the hopes that he could grandstand after this very predictable outcome.

The Moslem love of "martyrdom" (i.e., murder-suicide excused by religious authority) is only the second most obscene thing about the war. First place goes to those who aid and abet this nonsense, by standing in the way of the total annihilation of these death-worshipping savages.

So take your prize and go home now, Kofi. Better yet, put your money where your mouth is, and become a U.N. observer.

We have terrorist groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, regularly advocating genocide against Israel and following up their words with bloody attacks, even though the Israelis are capable of bombing them both back to the stone age in a matter of months. Yet and still, sizable percentages of civilians in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories are so nonplussed by the prospect of a conflict with Israel, that they go to the polls and enthusiastically support terrorists who are sure to drag them into war. That would seem to be a strong indication that Israel isn't being sufficiently hard on her enemies. [bold added]

Amen.

Moslems End Boycott of Danish (Tourism)

And speaking of Israel not being hard enough on her enemies, Amit Ghate is rendered almost speechless by the following example of Denmark actually aiding her enemies.

... Ahmed Akkari, the Danish imam who toured the Middle East inciting Muslims against Denmark, has just been evacuated from Lebanon -- by the same embassy he helped burn down. [links dropped]

Follow this link to see a picture of this. The many useful idiots in the West are giving Cox and Forkum a run for their money with the speed at which they are producing absurd images!

Coke Better than Pepsi

Mike, who has worked at a factory for flavorings, posted this awhile back, but it bears mentioning now anyway because he has solved an age-old riddle here.

While I'm at it, I'll explain why Pepsi sucks so bad, yet somehow manages to win taste tests. If you take Coke and Pepsi side by side in a blind test, Pepsi will win. This is because the bad taste of Pepsi cumulates from several sips (it is an aftertaste effect). So even though I hate Pepsi, I can take a sip or two and enjoy it. After half a can, I'm grossed out. Coke on the other hand tastes good no matter how much you drink, because its aftertaste is the same as its, uh ... during taste.

This cumulative nastiness of Pepsi is one of those things I have noticed myself, but was never quite able to put a finger on. I have always liked Coke better than Pepsi. Now I know why!

Bruno has a nice roundup concerning the Battle of Lebanon over at The Simplest Thing. ARI has been putting out lots of good stuff, too.

Wanna Job?

The Software Nerdreports that Mark Cuban is informally offering a job to the right kind of person -- if he leaves the right kind of comment on his blog.

If you think outside the box, here is your chance to work for a man who does the same. Interesting!

Deaver's War

ViaMike's Eyes, I read (Hmmm. That sounds almost telepathic....) an excellent post by Jim Woods on the causes of the current fighting in Lebanon.

In his book A Different Drummer: My Thirty Years with Ronald Reagan, Deaver recounts the role he played in reigning in Israel's attack on Beirut. On the television, the news displayed images of open warfare in what had been a vibrant city. In this case, the terrorists using Lebanese territory to wage war had been Arafat's PLO, and the Israelis were going to finish them off this time. By the point of Beirut, PLO military power had been rendered even more ineffective than usual and Israel was pounding their hiding places at will. However, this one-sided fight was too much for Deaver, who went all wobbly. He went to his employer and friend of many decades, President Reagan, and said he would resign if Reagan could not do something to stop the carnage. For his friend, Reagan made that call and Israel allowed the PLO to escape to exile in Tunisia.

But did that stop the carnage Mr. Deaver? NO! It might have stopped the images on the news that so disturbed him, but the killing continued. [link dropped]

Read the whole thing!

Happy July 25th!

The Gaijin Bikerpoints to one of the funniest Onionarticles I have seen in quite some time: "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence Founding Fathers, Patriots, Mr. T. Honored".

Wikipedia, the online, reader-edited encyclopedia, honored the 750th anniversary of American independence on July 25 with a special featured section on its main page Tuesday.

"It would have been a major oversight to ignore this portentous anniversary," said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, whose site now boasts over 4,300,000 articles in multiple languages, over one-quarter of which are in English, including 11,000 concerning popular toys of the 1980s alone. "At 750 years, the U.S. is by far the world's oldest surviving democracy, and is certainly deserving of our recognition," Wales said. "According to our database, that's 212 years older than the Eiffel Tower, 347 years older than the earliest-known woolly-mammoth fossil, and a full 493 years older than the microwave oven."

"In fact," added Wales, "at three-quarters of a millennium, the USA has been around almost as long as technology."

It's all this good!

Well, that's it. Blogger's editor makes it necessary to stop before I'm really done so I can make what I have presentable. (Damn "smart quotes" and other HTML hiccoughs!) As always, if you're looking for more to read, visit the good folks on my blogroll.